Dresden Files RPG 7/9/2011: Back in the Saddle Again
So, due to real world intrusions, we ended up taking the whole month of June off, just because everyone's schedule were not lining up.
Though we were going to try to play before this while two of the players were gone, but that ended up not happening, which left a plot hook hanging in the air.
Several weeks have past in game time, and the session begins with a knock at Ted's front door. Looking through the peephole, Ted sees that it is Agent Winters, and invites him in. Winters proceeds to produce an NTSB evidence bag with a strip of burnt and twisted metal, which he tosses down onto the table.
It's not easily identifiable, but Winters quickly informs the puzzled Ted that it’s the VIN number plate from his red Toyota Tacoma truck, found at the gas pipeline explosion site in San Bruno. Winters wants to know "unofficially" what happened, so that he can determine what needs to be done about it.
Ted gives him a vague lowdown of what happened, leaving things intentionally vague, irritating Winters. It’s at this point that Riley enters the room, just emerged from the shower and wearing only a towel. She decides to try to utilize her new glamour-veiling powers, but Winters manages to detect her nonetheless. With her efforts discovered, Riley retreats to get dressed and join the conversation.
Unsatisfied with the conversation, Winters lets them know he's going to talk to the Warden, and get the real story. As he leaves though, he leaves the evidence bag with the VIN number on the table for Ted to dispose of.
Riley calls Alex to give him a heads up, so he's not surprised when Winters shows up. He invites him in and gives him the raw truth about what happened. He informed him that it was time traveling wizards, and that the blast was most likely caused by someone's death curse. Knowing that the perpetrator's are outside his ability to deal with, Winters and Alex discuss some of the finer theories on time traveling and paradoxes, and about if killing the person who caused the explosion to happen would rewrite history, preventing it. Without really anything else able to be done, he departs.
Alex and Alystria decide to call a cab and head for Vesuvio's for a drink. While at the same time, Riley and Ted decide to head for the bar as well.
Before their arrival though, Venus has an unexpected guest. Fix, the Summer Knight, is escorted upstairs into her offices, where he gives her the information he said he would in exchange for her assistance, the location of her Golden Apple. Fix informs her that her brother Ares is currently in possession of it. With a knowing smile, he bows and leaves her with this information.
Just as Alex is walking out the door to catch his cab, he receives a phone call from a Father Mendoza of Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament*, located in Sacramento. A Mr. Ramirez told him that he should call him to let him know that there have been quite a lot of strange reports in the recent days, sightings of "things", as well as livestock being mutilated. Alex says he'll look into it, and heads for the bar.
Once everyone arrives, Alex asks the gang if they'd be interested in helping him look into this incident up in Sacramento. During the process, Riley manages to take offense to Alex's use of the term "mortal", which creates some drama. At the same time, Ted manages to lip of to Venus, and which point she puts the Potent Incite Emotion WHAMMY on him. Ted has to burn through a couple of FATE points to fend her off, and gets really angry about her trying to manipulate his emotions on Accorded Neutral Ground. Venus relents, and buys him another round of drinks to make up for their "misunderstanding".
The gang decides that since it's still fairly early, they should catch the last train up to Sacramento and go see Father Mendoza in the morning. A quick jaunt over to Emeryville to catch the Capitol Corridor Amtrak, and things are going.
Ted finally turns his cell phone on, since having it on when the Wizard was around was no good. He's got several messages, 2 from Sister Jillian Visconti. The first one is her letting him know that she's taking a team out to a commune out in Dixon to investigate reports of some disturbances of potential demonic nature. Her second voicemail is her again in a terrified voice, shouting for him to bring the wizard over the roar of gunfire! Yikes!
Ted informs the group, and they begin to try to formulate a plan. They quickly ascertain that the commune in Dixon is most likely Alystria's home.
(This was a plotline thread that got dropped because we didn't get a chance to game before this session to resolve what happened when Alystria went home to Dixon).
They decide to get off the train in Davis, and take a cab out to the compound. Alex and Ted, take off for the dining car, leaving an extremely hungry Venus alone with Riley and Alystria. (I forgot to roll for Venus' hunger after her encounter with Ted). Alystria was busy distracting herself, so Venus attempts to put the Incite Emotion WHAMMY on Riley. Riley ends up taking the consequence IRRITATINGLY HORNY, and ends up conceding the conflict, in which Venus takes her and Mike, the random Grad Student guy on the Train, downstairs to "occupy" the handicap stall.
Riley's player spends a FATE point to drag Ted into the scene just before they enter the bathroom, and Ted rants a good while at Venus, giving Riley enough time to marshal her willpower and toss off Venus' emotional incite. The scene ended with Venus taking Mike the grad student into the loo, and cut away from scene.
Riley and Ted discuss what to do about Venus while she's "busy" with Mike, and come to some sort of mutual support no-sex clause. Alystria cleverly points out that abstinence-only never works, and those who try to do so end up more likely to have risky and "bad" sex. Venus returns at the conclusion of the conversation, fully sated from her recent "encounter". Alex arrives shortly after, none the wiser as to what happens as the train finally arrives in Davis.
While waiting for the cab at the train station, Ted informs Alex what Venus tried to do, at which point Alex dropped the shell and informed Riley and Ted (not sure about Alystria) of Venus' true nature, that she is actually the Goddess Aphrodite. Ted gulps, thinking he'd just been picking on some punk priestess, not an actual goddess. They all come together at the end and demand that she vow to refrain from trying to "dine" off them and those who they care about. Venus extracts the counter concession that they won't interfere with her obtaining that which she needs to survive.
The cab arrives, and they head out to the compound in Dixon. They arrive at a cattle gate at the end of a dirt road. Alystria skips along the moonlit lane of almond trees, while Ted's spidey senses go off the radar. Alystria does her birdcall sound letting everyone know that someone is back, but there is no response. She immediately turns into raccoon form and heads for the main building, where she immediately begins to scream from the site.
The rest of the gang runs up, finding Alystria hysterical, for in the front room of the building lies several bodies, whose chests look like they've exploded open, showering the entire room in gore. Alystria gets up, stark naked, and sprint over to her momma’s trailer, only to be greeted by the stench of death and decay when she opens the door. She sinks to the ground, and hysterical mess. Alex arrives, and locks eyes with her, drawing her into a soulgaze. At which point, she ends up discovering far more about him than he does about her.
The gang begins to search the rest of the ring of trailers, the first two yield more death and carnage. They check the third one, and while looking into the little bedroom of the sunbeam, something horrific leaps down from the ceiling at Ted and Alex.
Alex managed to barely make his supernatural awareness roll, and so he was actually able to defend himself from the creatures attack. He managed to successfully defend, and using the redirect force stunt to place the DAZED aspect on the creature and he threw it into the wall.
The creature lunged for Alex, who managed to barely throw up a force shield to stop its attack. Alex let off one of his force rings that injured the creature, while Ted missed with a judo kick.
The creature again attacked Alex, who once again used a defensive shield to stop the creature. Alex used a globe of entropic water to engulf the creature, hurting it and forcing it to take the DISORIENTED consequence. Ted once again could not get a good attack on the creature in such confined quarters.
The creature went at Alex again, and would have taken 7 stress from the attack, except that he tagged the DISORIENTED consequence and invoked an aspect of him own, reducing the damage to 3 stress. In response, he blew the thing away with the second charge on his force ring, sending it crashing through the side of the camper out into the open, where the others were waiting.
And that is where we ended the session:
What Rocked:
Demonic Possession! I love how versatile the Dresdenverse is. I've been able to run action, investigation, and now sci-fi horror.
Venus' attempts to feed off the sexual energy of various party members were awesome! I have been having to remind folks that she's hotter than the hottest supermodel in the world and to react accordingly, but it seemed like this session finally clicked for folks to get it.
The scene on the train was awesome and hilarious, leading to many, many NC-17 remarks. Handling mature themes is always a tricky business, but I think our group has been handling them quite well without making anyone feel uncomfortable.
I felt like the pacing was better, though there was one child-related delay that we managed to handle without much problem.
I loved how the whole group has made the assumption that Venus’ ability to incite emotion is a bad thing. It will be interesting to see their reactions when I finally reveal the “drawback” of being under her sway.
What could have been better:
The Dixon plot hook evaporated. At the end of last session, I had Alystria head off to Dixon to deal with "trouble at home". Her calling Riley for help was suppose to be the plot hook thread for our game last week, when Alex and Venus' players weren't going to be there. But this game session didn't happen due to real life, and I didn't want to leave Alystria's player without anything to do till I pushed the "panic button".
Once again the crew headed off into action without "gearing up". In fact, by going for the last train instead of waiting till morning, Ted was without his "go" bag (since his last one was in his blown up truck) and the Warden didn't have his Warden Sword (which he leaves at his house). He was able to get his focii, since his bookstore is across the street from Vesuvio's.
I also forgot again to have Venus roll for her hunger. Need to keep remembering to do that at the end of any scene she uses her powers.
Though we were going to try to play before this while two of the players were gone, but that ended up not happening, which left a plot hook hanging in the air.
Several weeks have past in game time, and the session begins with a knock at Ted's front door. Looking through the peephole, Ted sees that it is Agent Winters, and invites him in. Winters proceeds to produce an NTSB evidence bag with a strip of burnt and twisted metal, which he tosses down onto the table.
It's not easily identifiable, but Winters quickly informs the puzzled Ted that it’s the VIN number plate from his red Toyota Tacoma truck, found at the gas pipeline explosion site in San Bruno. Winters wants to know "unofficially" what happened, so that he can determine what needs to be done about it.
Ted gives him a vague lowdown of what happened, leaving things intentionally vague, irritating Winters. It’s at this point that Riley enters the room, just emerged from the shower and wearing only a towel. She decides to try to utilize her new glamour-veiling powers, but Winters manages to detect her nonetheless. With her efforts discovered, Riley retreats to get dressed and join the conversation.
Unsatisfied with the conversation, Winters lets them know he's going to talk to the Warden, and get the real story. As he leaves though, he leaves the evidence bag with the VIN number on the table for Ted to dispose of.
Riley calls Alex to give him a heads up, so he's not surprised when Winters shows up. He invites him in and gives him the raw truth about what happened. He informed him that it was time traveling wizards, and that the blast was most likely caused by someone's death curse. Knowing that the perpetrator's are outside his ability to deal with, Winters and Alex discuss some of the finer theories on time traveling and paradoxes, and about if killing the person who caused the explosion to happen would rewrite history, preventing it. Without really anything else able to be done, he departs.
Alex and Alystria decide to call a cab and head for Vesuvio's for a drink. While at the same time, Riley and Ted decide to head for the bar as well.
Before their arrival though, Venus has an unexpected guest. Fix, the Summer Knight, is escorted upstairs into her offices, where he gives her the information he said he would in exchange for her assistance, the location of her Golden Apple. Fix informs her that her brother Ares is currently in possession of it. With a knowing smile, he bows and leaves her with this information.
Just as Alex is walking out the door to catch his cab, he receives a phone call from a Father Mendoza of Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament*, located in Sacramento. A Mr. Ramirez told him that he should call him to let him know that there have been quite a lot of strange reports in the recent days, sightings of "things", as well as livestock being mutilated. Alex says he'll look into it, and heads for the bar.
Once everyone arrives, Alex asks the gang if they'd be interested in helping him look into this incident up in Sacramento. During the process, Riley manages to take offense to Alex's use of the term "mortal", which creates some drama. At the same time, Ted manages to lip of to Venus, and which point she puts the Potent Incite Emotion WHAMMY on him. Ted has to burn through a couple of FATE points to fend her off, and gets really angry about her trying to manipulate his emotions on Accorded Neutral Ground. Venus relents, and buys him another round of drinks to make up for their "misunderstanding".
The gang decides that since it's still fairly early, they should catch the last train up to Sacramento and go see Father Mendoza in the morning. A quick jaunt over to Emeryville to catch the Capitol Corridor Amtrak, and things are going.
Ted finally turns his cell phone on, since having it on when the Wizard was around was no good. He's got several messages, 2 from Sister Jillian Visconti. The first one is her letting him know that she's taking a team out to a commune out in Dixon to investigate reports of some disturbances of potential demonic nature. Her second voicemail is her again in a terrified voice, shouting for him to bring the wizard over the roar of gunfire! Yikes!
Ted informs the group, and they begin to try to formulate a plan. They quickly ascertain that the commune in Dixon is most likely Alystria's home.
(This was a plotline thread that got dropped because we didn't get a chance to game before this session to resolve what happened when Alystria went home to Dixon).
They decide to get off the train in Davis, and take a cab out to the compound. Alex and Ted, take off for the dining car, leaving an extremely hungry Venus alone with Riley and Alystria. (I forgot to roll for Venus' hunger after her encounter with Ted). Alystria was busy distracting herself, so Venus attempts to put the Incite Emotion WHAMMY on Riley. Riley ends up taking the consequence IRRITATINGLY HORNY, and ends up conceding the conflict, in which Venus takes her and Mike, the random Grad Student guy on the Train, downstairs to "occupy" the handicap stall.
Riley's player spends a FATE point to drag Ted into the scene just before they enter the bathroom, and Ted rants a good while at Venus, giving Riley enough time to marshal her willpower and toss off Venus' emotional incite. The scene ended with Venus taking Mike the grad student into the loo, and cut away from scene.
Riley and Ted discuss what to do about Venus while she's "busy" with Mike, and come to some sort of mutual support no-sex clause. Alystria cleverly points out that abstinence-only never works, and those who try to do so end up more likely to have risky and "bad" sex. Venus returns at the conclusion of the conversation, fully sated from her recent "encounter". Alex arrives shortly after, none the wiser as to what happens as the train finally arrives in Davis.
While waiting for the cab at the train station, Ted informs Alex what Venus tried to do, at which point Alex dropped the shell and informed Riley and Ted (not sure about Alystria) of Venus' true nature, that she is actually the Goddess Aphrodite. Ted gulps, thinking he'd just been picking on some punk priestess, not an actual goddess. They all come together at the end and demand that she vow to refrain from trying to "dine" off them and those who they care about. Venus extracts the counter concession that they won't interfere with her obtaining that which she needs to survive.
The cab arrives, and they head out to the compound in Dixon. They arrive at a cattle gate at the end of a dirt road. Alystria skips along the moonlit lane of almond trees, while Ted's spidey senses go off the radar. Alystria does her birdcall sound letting everyone know that someone is back, but there is no response. She immediately turns into raccoon form and heads for the main building, where she immediately begins to scream from the site.
The rest of the gang runs up, finding Alystria hysterical, for in the front room of the building lies several bodies, whose chests look like they've exploded open, showering the entire room in gore. Alystria gets up, stark naked, and sprint over to her momma’s trailer, only to be greeted by the stench of death and decay when she opens the door. She sinks to the ground, and hysterical mess. Alex arrives, and locks eyes with her, drawing her into a soulgaze. At which point, she ends up discovering far more about him than he does about her.
The gang begins to search the rest of the ring of trailers, the first two yield more death and carnage. They check the third one, and while looking into the little bedroom of the sunbeam, something horrific leaps down from the ceiling at Ted and Alex.
Alex managed to barely make his supernatural awareness roll, and so he was actually able to defend himself from the creatures attack. He managed to successfully defend, and using the redirect force stunt to place the DAZED aspect on the creature and he threw it into the wall.
The creature lunged for Alex, who managed to barely throw up a force shield to stop its attack. Alex let off one of his force rings that injured the creature, while Ted missed with a judo kick.
The creature again attacked Alex, who once again used a defensive shield to stop the creature. Alex used a globe of entropic water to engulf the creature, hurting it and forcing it to take the DISORIENTED consequence. Ted once again could not get a good attack on the creature in such confined quarters.
The creature went at Alex again, and would have taken 7 stress from the attack, except that he tagged the DISORIENTED consequence and invoked an aspect of him own, reducing the damage to 3 stress. In response, he blew the thing away with the second charge on his force ring, sending it crashing through the side of the camper out into the open, where the others were waiting.
And that is where we ended the session:
What Rocked:
Demonic Possession! I love how versatile the Dresdenverse is. I've been able to run action, investigation, and now sci-fi horror.
Venus' attempts to feed off the sexual energy of various party members were awesome! I have been having to remind folks that she's hotter than the hottest supermodel in the world and to react accordingly, but it seemed like this session finally clicked for folks to get it.
The scene on the train was awesome and hilarious, leading to many, many NC-17 remarks. Handling mature themes is always a tricky business, but I think our group has been handling them quite well without making anyone feel uncomfortable.
I felt like the pacing was better, though there was one child-related delay that we managed to handle without much problem.
I loved how the whole group has made the assumption that Venus’ ability to incite emotion is a bad thing. It will be interesting to see their reactions when I finally reveal the “drawback” of being under her sway.
What could have been better:
The Dixon plot hook evaporated. At the end of last session, I had Alystria head off to Dixon to deal with "trouble at home". Her calling Riley for help was suppose to be the plot hook thread for our game last week, when Alex and Venus' players weren't going to be there. But this game session didn't happen due to real life, and I didn't want to leave Alystria's player without anything to do till I pushed the "panic button".
Once again the crew headed off into action without "gearing up". In fact, by going for the last train instead of waiting till morning, Ted was without his "go" bag (since his last one was in his blown up truck) and the Warden didn't have his Warden Sword (which he leaves at his house). He was able to get his focii, since his bookstore is across the street from Vesuvio's.
I also forgot again to have Venus roll for her hunger. Need to keep remembering to do that at the end of any scene she uses her powers.